Influenced by Alfred Steiglitz’s concept of photography as a means of translating the objective world into an emotionally symbolic idea, Minor White believed that this photograph of stones and driftwood had the power to transform, rather than simply record, the landscape. The photographer, White wrote, “recognizes an object or series of forms that, when photographed, would yield an image with specific suggestive powers that can direct the viewer into a specific and known feeling, state, or place within himself.”